Abstract

This book carries a series of brief sketches on how twelve US presidents since Franklin Roosevelt perceived and dealt with South Asia—most particularly, of course, India and Pakistan, from World War II to present day. It proposes that US foreign policy was influenced by broad political-historical patterns as well as the personal whims and preferences of the elected president at any given point in time. In this way, though political considerations which underlie their individual actions and define their contexts, foreign policy was also influenced by their unique personalities, levels of awareness, and intellectual gifts (or lack of them).

Events such as World War II, Cold War and most recently, the rise of Islamic radicalism and terrorism posed the most sustained challenges which the presidents have ...

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Gould, H. A. (2010). The South Asia story: The first sixty years of US relations with India and Pakistan New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd doi: 10.4135/9788132105503

Gould, Harold A.. The South Asia Story: The First Sixty Years of US Relations with India and Pakistan. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2010. doi: 10.4135/9788132105503.

Gould, H A 2010, The south asia story: the first sixty years of us relations with india and pakistan, SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, viewed 19 December 2018, doi: 10.4135/9788132105503.

Copyright

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

List of Photographs

3.1 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower welcomes Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the White House in Washington in 1956 37

3.2 During the 1956 state visit of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the U.S. with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower 38

3.3 President Eisenhower with Indian President Dr Rajendra Prasad during U.S. President's visit to India in December 1959 39

3.4 A beaming President Eisenhower addresses Delhi's citizens in December 1959 40

3.5 President Eisenhower and Pakistan's President Mohammad Ayub Khan watch a horsemanship display by lancers by the mounted guard on polo field near Presidential Palace in Karachi, December 8, 1959. Pakistan is the third stop on Ike's II-nation tour 41

4.1 President John F. Kennedy and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru during the latter's third and final visit to the U.S. in November 1961 46

4.2 Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of India, greeted with a parade given in his honor by President Kennedy 48

[Page 8]

6.1 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with Mrs Martin Luther King Jr. and Walter Fauntroy, U.S. Representative of the District of Columbia, at Blair House in Washington on November 5, 1971 58

8.1 U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife's visit to New Delhi on January 1, 1978 70

8.2 Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai and U.S. President Jimmy Carter sign the Delhi Declaration 71

8.3 Pakistan's President Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq (left) and his guest former U.S. President Jimmy Carter listen, Monday, November 3, 1986 in Peshawar, to Afghan refugee leaders during a meeting at a refugee camp near Peshawar. Carter and his wife visited several parts of the sprawling camp 72

9.1 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with U.S. President Ronald Reagan during her 1982 visit to U.S. 77

9.2 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi receives from U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean the first copy of a book commemorating 40 years of Indo-U.S. Cooperation 78

9.3 U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his wife welcome Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his wife at the White House on June 12, 1985 79

9.4 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi with President Ronald Reagan outside the White House on October 20, 1987 80

12.1 U.S. President George W. Bush, left, meets with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Wednesday, September 22, 2004 101

12.2 Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, right, poses for a photo with U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, left, after their meeting at Bhutto's residence in Karachi on Monday, November 19, 2007 102

12.3 President Bush meets with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in New York, Tuesday, September 23, 2008. The president is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly later today 103

PS-1 President Barack Obama meets with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G-20 summit at the ExCel Centre in London. India has watched with wariness as President Barack Obama's administration has lavished attention on rivals Pakistan and China. Now, Obama is trying to ease Indian worries by honoring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 with the first state visit of his presidency 109

[Page 10]

Prelude: The South Asian Policies of American Presidents

[Page 11]

This series of articles was written at the behest of the late Mr Gopal Raju, editor-in-chief of News India-Times. They appeared in this magazine in twelve installments from February 16 to May 11, 2007. In a slightly revised form, they now have been assembled in this small volume. As with the original pieces, the purpose was and is to provide brief sketches of how each U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt perceived and dealt with South Asia—most particularly, of course, India and Pakistan. The essays are deliberately succinct and assiduously avoid ponderous and technical phraseology while nevertheless striving to present an authoritative yet readable account of the course that [Page 12]U.S. South Asian policy has followed over the past sixty years. In fact, clarity and readability, combined with an abundance of archival photographs to enliven the text and stimulate visual awareness of the historical events adumbrated, have been the prime motivation; the hope is that this format will arouse the interest of informed citizens and induce them to acquire greater understanding of this crucially important but frequently misunderstood region.

The rise of politicized Islam and terrorism has raised the strategic ante in South Asia to an unprecedented level. Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Muslim ultra-radicalism which this has in turn spawned, South Asia did not occupy a high priority status either in the eyes of the American public or the country's foreign policy establishment. Very little effort was made to develop scholarly expertise and linguistic competence on South and Southeast Asia. Only a few American universities maintained any semblance of so-called area studies programs focused on these regions; even today there are no more than a dozen of such programs, of mixed quality, in the entire country.

Now, however, there is at last a realization that South Asia matters in the larger scheme of things. It can be said that Pakistan is the original home base of contemporary terrorism and jihadism. Driven by conflict over Kashmir and communal antipathy that has dogged Hindu–Muslim relationships for more than a century, India [Page 13]and Pakistan have lived perennially on the threshold of ethno-religious war. Due to its proximity to Afghanistan, Pakistan has become an involuntary host of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban; Mullah Umar and Osama bin Laden have been asylumed for years somewhere along the Afghan–Pakistan border. Terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan have targeted Kashmir, as well as major Indian urban centers like Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Delhi, for over twenty years. The horrific “26–11” attack on Mumbai by Lashkar-i-Tayiba is merely the latest manifestation of Pakistan's obsessive aversion to India.

Nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear war has also become a fact of life in South Asia. Ironically, so has the global economy. The power to destroy and the power to prosper walk hand in hand in the region.

It all comes down to the fact that America, and indeed the world, cannot any longer take South Asia lightly. For this reason, it is important to understand the region's historical roots, the crises and challenges its people and governments have faced, and the region's triumphs and tragedies. Hopefully this small volume will help to achieve a measure of this needed understanding.

There have been twelve American presidents, from World War II until the present, who have left their imprint on the region. Each will be considered chronologically: 1. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941–1945); 2. Harry S. Truman (1945–1953); 3. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961); 4. John F. Kennedy (1961–1963); 5. Lyndon [Page 14]Baines Johnson (1963–1969); 6. Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974); 7. Gerald Ford (1974–1977); 8. Jimmy Carter (1977–1981); 9. Ronald Reagan (1981–1989); 10. George H.W. Bush (1989–1993); 11. Bill Clinton (1993–2001); 12. George W. Bush (2001–2009). In point of fact, as of November 4, 2008, we must now add a thirteenth American president, Barack Hussein Obama, to our list of American presidents, whose mandate has just commenced and whose impact now awaits the judgment of history.

There are, of course, broad historical patterns, which underlie the individual actions and define the context of these presidents; but their unique personalities, levels of awareness, and intellectual gifts (or lack of them!) inevitably played an important role in what use they made of the options that history and immediate circumstances conferred on them. World War II and its immediate [Page 15]aftermath presented unique challenges. The permutations and ramifications of the Cold War posed the most sustained challenges to the first nine presidents—that is, Roosevelt through Reagan. Following the end of the Cold War, the rise of Islamic radicalism and terrorism has occupied center stage. However, Kashmir and Indo-Pakistani enmity has been a common thread running through all eras and presidencies, including even the most recent turn in U.S.–Indian relations toward greater political amity and formal strategic collaboration.

It needs to be pointed out that none of these American presidents ever had any meaningful experience with South Asia prior to entering office. For all of them it was a matter of “on-the-job training.” How they coped with this obviously varied in accordance with their individual political gifts and their ideological predisposition. Richard Nixon, for example, was ill-disposed toward India from the outset of his administration for reasons that are given in Chapter 6. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Chapter 3), Nixon's original “boss,” was increasingly drawn toward friendlier feelings toward India after having developed warm personal feelings for Jawaharlal Nehru. John F. Kennedy (Chapter 4), on the other hand, gravitated from idealism toward a measure of skepticism and disenchantment after he personally encountered Nehru during the prime minister's declining years. Lyndon Johnson (Chapter 5) developed an ambivalent attitude toward Indira Gandhi after she criticized his [Page 16]Vietnam policy. Bill Clinton's (Chapter 11) remarkable political instincts and sharp intellect, abetted by a boost from Pakistani political psychopathology, transformed him into a “convert” to the idea of comprehensive U.S.–Indian rapprochement. George Bush-2 (Chapter 12) became the unlikely architect of the final achievement of that rapprochement. It has now become President Barack Obama's challenge to synthesize and refine the positive achievements of his twelve predecessors and complete the process of fulfilling the quest for amity and mutual respect that began over sixty years ago.

We now must wait and see what the future holds for U.S.–Indian relations as the next regime change in U.S. politics commences.

Acknowledgements

[Page 17]

I wish to thank the late Mr Gopal Raju, Editor & Publisher of News India-Times for inviting me to publish the series of twelve articles on how U.S. presidents dealt with South Asia from World War II to the present upon which this book is based. Also I wish to express my gratitude to Senior Editor Ms Ela Dutt, of News India-Times, who so expertly guided me through the manifold editorial and other tasks connected with getting these articles into print. I want to express my gratitude to the SAGE Team (Rekha Natarajan, Nawazish Azim, and Meena Chakravorty) who helped and guided me through the permutations of this enterprise, along with Aarti David (Senior Assistant Manager, PR) and Subir Lahiri (Production Manager), and many others.

Finally I want to offer a special thanks to my dear friend and colleague, Dr T.N. Madan, of the Institute for Economic Growth, for his help and support in guiding this book through to publication. Also, special thanks to Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, Jr., Executive Secretary, U.S. Department of State, for encouraging me to publish these articles in book form.

[Page 18]

Postscript the 13th American President

[Page 106]

As this slim volume goes to press, a new general election has occurred in the United States. The new American President, Barack Obama, was inaugurated on January 13, 2009. He was immediately compelled to craft relationships with India and Pakistan which reflected the escalating impact of Islamic jihadism throughout the region, especially in Afghanistan and Hindu Kush. The choice had been between either Barack Obama, the first African-American to run for the presidency on one of the two major political parties, or Republican John McCain, a war hero of Vietnam vintage who was imprisoned for five years, and suffered mightily, at the hands of the Viet Minh in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”

There were strong differences between these two men, especially on issues of war and peace, on U.S. India relations, and international diplomacy in general. [Page 107]The winner's policies will impact differentially on U.S.–Indian relations, and not insignificantly.

Mr Obama based the foreign policy aspect of his presidential campaign on a pledge to expeditiously terminate the U.S. military presence in Iraq and place greater emphasis on defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In this connection, Obama has already gone on record with a promise that he will more aggressively pursue the jihadis who have now established themselves as a terrorist quasi-state in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. His decision to enlarge the U.S. military presence in the region by 30,000 troops stresses his determination to deliver the political goods.

With respect to American policy toward Iraq and Afghanistan, under an Obama administration, the candidate pledged that he would visit the region prior to the election and base his final conclusions about what must be done upon the situation he found existing on the ground there. He made hasty visits to the Middle East more to establish his bona fides as a foreign policy-cognizant politician than to accomplish anything concrete policy-wise. During the campaign, Obama spoke by phone with Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, and declared, “I emphasized to him how encouraged I was by the reductions in violence in Iraq, but also insisted that it is important for us to begin the process of withdrawing U.S. troops, making clear that we have no interest in [Page 108]permanent bases in Iraq” (CNN, June 17, 2008). This was a clear indication that under his presidency the messianic mission of the Bush administration to impose the so-called “American Dream” on the Middle East, will be brought to an end and replaced by more measured, mature approaches emphasizing cooperation and consensus among the many countries, including India, who are concerned with achieving political stability in the Middle East and South Asia; wherever possible this would include participation by the United Nations and other multinational bodies like NATO.

Such an approach would offer considerable scope for the world's two largest democracies to pursue collaborative and mutually beneficial initiatives across a wide spectrum of international challenges, ranging from nuclear proliferation (especially pertaining to Iran) to terrorism, and the creation of oil and natural gas pipelines, which promise to forge a vast and challenging network of economic and political links between South, Southeast, and Inner Asia on a scale unimaginable even two decades ago.

There have been no indications that Mr Obama would not endeavor to pursue the U.S.–Indian strategic relationship as this has evolved under the Bush administration.

Concerning Pakistan specifically, Mr Obama has publicly chided the country's leadership for failing to deal decisively with the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. [Page 109]He went on record to declare that he would not hesitate to authorize a military strike into Waziristan if an accurate sighting of the Al Qaeda leader should occur. As I stated in an India Abroad article on September 27, 2007, “Understandably, this has caused a stir in Islamabad and has prompted Obama's rivals in both political parties to accuse him of all the usual things that are standard fare for political rivals in search of an electoral advantage.”

Photograph PS-1: President Barack Obama meets with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G-20 summit at the ExCel Centre in London. India has watched with wariness as President Barack Obama's administration has lavished attention on rivals Pakistan and China. Now, Obama is trying to ease Indian worries by honoring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 with the first state visit of his presidency

[Page 110]Quite to the contrary, however, Mr Obama's orientation to the Pakistan conundrum has an air of authenticity about it. His presidency would seem to herald a decisive end to any further American blank check tolerance of military dictatorship in that country. Mr Obama seems to be saying that the long-standing modus vivendi, which for half a century has allowed the Pakistani ruling elite to have its political cake and eat it must end once and for all; that a new policy disposition will make American support for Pakistan dependent upon whether it creates latitude for genuine civilian government and serious efforts to eliminate the Taliban-Al Qaeda asylum in the Hindu Kush. The priority should be, he declared (India Abroad, February 29, 2008), “to do more to roll back the Al Qaeda sanctuary,” without putting all our eggs in the Musharraf basket. “Assistance to Pakistan should be conditional, in order to encourage strong action against Al Qaeda and a restoration of democracy in that country.”

Another advantage, which President Obama brings to the table is his multicultural and multiracial credentials. The offspring of a Kenyan father and a middle-class White woman from the middle-western state of Kansas, Obama spent some of his early childhood years living in the Third World—in Indonesia where he attended elementary school in predominantly Muslim educational institutions while his mother did anthropological fieldwork there in pursuit of her doctoral degree in this field. He then [Page 111]spent his later childhood and adolescence in Hawaii, another multicultural, multiracial environment. He also spent time in Kenya trying to establish meaningful ties with his late father's kinsmen, something he discusses at length and with great poignancy in his remarkable autobiographical book, Dreams from my Father.

These socialization experiences make Mr Obama the most culturally unique among all American presidents who have preceded him, and the most instinctively internationally oriented president in American history. His sensitivity to the political and cultural nuances of the Third World bode nothing but good for the future of U.S. relations both with India and Pakistan.

Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for U.S. Presidentship, hails from a very different social, cultural, and political background. He is the scion of three generations of high ranking naval officers. It is well known that as a fighter-bomber pilot during the Vietnam War he was shot down and imprisoned for five years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, where he was subjected to unspeakable torture and duress. Once returned to the United States, Mr McCain won election to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate. His political career won him in some measure the image of a “maverick,” who has not always hued to the neoconservative political doctrines and policies, which the Bush administration pursued, and led to the controversial invasion of Iraq. However, Mr McCain's [Page 112]differences with the Bush administration were never over the invasion of Iraq per se but over their unsuccessful ability to consolidate their conquest and achieve their stated goal of bringing American style democracy to the region. He advocated throughout his campaign an indefinite military involvement in Iraq and at the same time pledged if elected President to pursue conservative economic policies at home that essentially would further abet the process of transferring wealth to the corporate elite in the name of a radical form of carte blanch “trickle-down economics,” which would allegedly, but controversially, impart prosperity to American society writ large. The current collapse of America's financial markets and skyrocketing unemployment stand in mute testimony to the ruinous implications of such policies.

There is one aspect of the incumbent Obama administration, which invokes some unease in India about the future of U.S.–Indian relations. It pertains to the identity of many of the advisors who appear to be on deck to join the Obama administration in foreign policy capacities. As far as South Asia is concerned, Siddharth Varadarajan (The Hindu, November 6, 2008) points out that several of these individuals evoke “unhappy memories” of the roles they played during past administrations on issues like nonproliferation, “hypenization,” and Kashmir. These include Anthony Lake, Strobe Talbott, Robert Einhorn, Richard Holbrooke, Karl Inderfurth, and even Vice-President Joe Biden. On these issues, “India has [Page 113]reason to be cautious.” How energetically might some of these advisors make India's continued strategic partnership with the United States dependent upon her signing the CTBT before she deems it to be in her strategic interest to do so? Could events in Kashmir take an ugly turn that would induce the Obama administration to appoint an “American special envoy … something that would slice through the ‘strategic partnership’ like a hot knife through butter?” Could the war against the Taliban/Al Qaeda escalate to such proportions that the U.S. military relationship with Pakistan would result in a “re-hypenization” of India and Pakistan in U.S. South Asia policy?

These are clearly possible eventualities that could draw the Obama administration in part or in whole back into the pre-Clinton and pre-Bush policy mode. However, the chances of this occurring do not seem to be great given the apparent level of Mr Obama's intellectual depth, and the economic, political, and strategic resources that have been built up over the past decade-and-a-half. In Varadarajan's words, it is unlikely that “an Obama administration will risk jeopardizing the gains Washington has already made through the Bush years by pursuing policies on terrorism, Kashmir and the economy which would alienate India.”

Notes

1. Pakistan, by contrast, hesitated to go as far as India along this path, in part because of the attraction of its leaders to Islamic theocratic predilections and in part because the dominant elites who inherited power in the new state were predominantly landed aristocracies, traditional bureaucrats, and members of an officer corps steeped in the norms of the old colonial culture all of whom who saw mass politics as a threat to their sense of public order and privilege. The result was a failure to carry constitutional development beyond the limited franchise, “viceregal” constitutional structure, which the British and the nationalists had negotiated in 1935 but which India undertook to supercede as soon as freedom had been won. In India, this democratization process consummated in the 1950 Constitution of India, one of the most comprehensive democratic constitutions ever written. In Pakistan, by contrast, the retention of a limited franchise constitution, which preserved the dominance and privileges of the elite classes resulted in an autocratic/paternalistic pattern of government which by 1959 culminated in the country's first (but not last) military dictatorship (under General Ayub Khan). This difference between the type of government chosen by each state was destined to be a crucial factor in determining America's differential orientation to India and Pakistan over the ensuing years.

2. The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program [ERP]) was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for [Page 115]the allied countries of Europe, and repelling communism after World War II. The initiative was named for U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan.

The reconstruction plan was developed at a meeting of the participating European states on July 12, 1947. The Marshall Plan offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, if they would make political reforms and accept certain outside controls. However the Soviet Union rejected this proposal with Vyacheslav Molotov describing the plan as dollar imperialism.

The plan was in operation for four years beginning in July 1947. During that period some USD13 billion of economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

3. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO; French: Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord [“OTAN”]; also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, or the Western Alliance) is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. With headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, the organization established a system of collective security whereby its member states agreed to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

The Treaty of Brussels, signed on March 17, 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. This treaty established a military alliance, later to become the Western European Union. However, American participation was thought necessary in order to counter the military power of the Soviet Union, and therefore talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately.

These talks resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty, created by Lester B. Pearson, which was signed in Washington, DC on [Page 116]April 4, 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states, as well as the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Three years later, on February 18, 1952, Greece and Turkey also joined. Because of geography, Australia and New Zealand missed out on membership. In place of this, the ANZUS agreement was made by the United States with these nations.

4. The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy designed to contain communism by giving Greece and Turkey economic aid. Gaining the support of the Republicans who controlled Congress, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed the Doctrine on March 12, 1947. It stated that the United States would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere. The Doctrine shifted American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from Détente to, as George F. Kennan phrased it, a policy of containment of Soviet expansion. Historians often use it to mark the starting date of the Cold War.

5. The Korean War, occurring between June 25, 1950, and a cease-fire on July 27, 1953, was a war fought in Korea that was divided by the post-World War II Soviet and American occupation zones, with large scale participation by other countries. The war began with the invasion of capitalist South Korea by forces in Communist North Korea in 1950 and ended as a stalemate between the sides in 1953.

The principal support on the side of the North was China, with limited assistance by Soviet combat advisors, military pilots, and weapons. South Korea was supported by UN forces, principally from the United States, although many other nations also contributed personnel. When the conflict began, North and South Korea existed as provisional governments competing for control over the Korean peninsula after the Division of Korea.

Thanks to a temporary Soviet absence from the Security Council—the Soviets were boycotting the Security Council to protest the exclusion of People's Republic of China (PRC)[Page 117]from the UN—there was no veto by Stalin and the (Nationalist controlled) Republic of China government held the Chinese seat. Without Soviet and Chinese vetoes, and with only Yugoslavia abstaining, the UN voted to aid South Korea on June 27. U.S. forces were joined by troops from 15 other UN members: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, South Africa, Turkey, Thailand, Greece, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Colombia, the Philippines, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The Soviet Union and its allies, however, challenged the resolution on grounds of illegality since a permanent member of the council (Soviet Union) was absent from the voting. The North Korean government also did not concur. In 1950, A Soviet resolution calling for an end of hostilities and withdrawal of foreign troops was rejected.

In South Korea, the war is often called 6.25, from the date of the start of the conflict or, more formally, Han-guk Jeonjaeng (literally “Korean War”). In North Korea, it is formally called the Fatherland Liberation War. In the United States, the conflict was officially termed a police action—the Korean Conflict—rather than a war, largely in order to avoid the necessity of a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress. The war is sometimes referred to outside Korea as “The Forgotten War” because it is a major conflict of the 20th century that garners far less attention than World War II, which preceded it, and the controversial Vietnam War, which succeeded it. In China, the conflict was known as the War to Resist America and Aid Korea, but is today commonly called the “Korean War.”

6. The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion (also known in Cuba as the Playa Girón after the beach in the Bay of Pigs where the landing took place) was an unsuccessful U.S.-planned and funded attempted invasion by armed Cuban exiles in southwest Cuba. An attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, this action accelerated a rapid deterioration in Cuban–American relations, which was further worsened by the Cuban Missile Crisis the [Page 118]following year. The name Bay of Pigs comes from Bahia de Cochinos, where in all probability Cochino refers to a species of Triggerfish (Balistes vetula), rather than pigs (Sus scrofa).

7. The Iran-Contra Affair was a political scandal in the United States during the 1980s. Large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. The affair is still shrouded with secrecy and it is very hard to discover the facts. It involved several members of the Reagan Administration, who in 1986 helped to illegally sell arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the proceeds to fund, also illegally, the Contras, a right-wing guerrilla organization in Nicaragua.

After the arms sales were revealed in November 1986, President Ronald Reagan appeared on national television and denied that they had occurred. However, a week later, on November 13, he returned to the airwaves to affirm that weapons were indeed transferred to Iran. He denied that they were part of an exchange for hostages.

8. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty or the Manila Pact, was an international organization for collective defense established on September 8, 1954. It was primarily created to block further communist gains in Southeast Asia. The organization's headquarters was located in Bangkok, Thailand. SEATO was dissolved on June 30, 1977.

The Central Treaty Organization (also referred to as CENTO, original name was Middle East Treaty Organization or METO, also known as the Baghdad Pact) was adopted in 1955 by Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran, as well as Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran, as well as the United Kingdom. Although American pressure, along with promises of military and economic largesse, were key in the negotiations leading to the agreement, the United States chose not to initially participate as to avoid alienating Arab states with which it was still attempting to cultivate friendly relations. [Page 119]Some (particularly nationalist radicals) saw the Pact as an attempt by the British to retain influence in the Middle East as a substitute for the loss of their empire in India. In 1958 the United States joined the military committee of the alliance. It is generally viewed as one of the least successful of the Cold War alliances. Organizations headquarters were initially located in Baghdad (Iraq) 1955–1958 and Ankara (Turkey) 1958–1979.

1. For a concise account of the efforts made by the nascent “India lobby” in the United States to persuade the organizers of the formative session of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco to replace the nominees to the conference provided by the British-dominated Government of India (GOI) with Vijayalakshmi Pandit of the Indian National Congress as the sole spokesperson for soon-to-be-independent India, see Chapter 10, pp. 379–386, “The India Lobby and the San Francisco Conference,” in Harold A. Gould, Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The Rise of the India Lobby in the United States, 1900 to 1946, Sage India, 2006.

2. See Note 5, Chapter 1. The reason why the U.S. could be authorized by the UN to lead a “police action” against the North Korean invasion of the South was because the Soviet Union was boycotting the organization.

3. This was the book that profoundly influenced the evolution of postwar U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East and South Asia. For background on Caroe's South Asia regional expertise and ideological predilections, see, Olaf Caroe, The Pathans. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1958.

1. There is veritable library of works on John Foster Dulles, which describe and analyse his political evolution as one of the principal architects of the Cold War. But for a single book which [Page 120]traces the origins, character, and impact of John Foster Dulles and his two siblings, Allen and Eleanor Lansing Dulles, see: Mosley, A Bibliography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network, (New York: The Dial Press, 1978).

2. The emergence and crystallization of Muslim political self-consciousness dates back to the turn of the century. It correlates with the rise of nationalism in India which itself was a byproduct of the pervasive institutional transformation taking place throughout the Subcontinent associated with the introduction of modernity. As modern organization gradually ramified throughout the Subcontinent, the British Raj found itself confronted with escalating demands for shared participation in the material benefits that modern technology was yielding. Because India is a highly pluralistic social world, political mobilization in pursuit of these demands were increasingly expressed in cultural-linguistic and ethno-religious terms. It is in this context that the Hindu–Muslim divide occurred which underlay the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and ultimately Partition in 1945 and the Kashmir dispute that quickly followed on its heels. There is a vast literature on this process of which the following citations are among the best:

Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson, and Anil Seal, Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics, 1870–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Harold A. Gould, Grass-Roots Politics in India: A Century of Political Evolution in Faizabad District (New Delhi: Oxford & IBH, 1994).

3. This story has appeared in numerous sources. One of these is: Richard J. Barnet, The Alliance: America, Europe, Japan, Makers of the Postwar World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 34.

1. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which opened for signature in 1996, was intended to prohibit all nuclear test explosions. The CTBT has achieved near universal adherence; however, Article XIV of the Treaty requires ratification by 44 named states before the Treaty can enter into force.

Of these 44 named states, three—India, Pakistan, North Korea—have not signed the Treaty. A further seven states—China, Columbia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and the United States—have signed but not ratified the Treaty.

Although the Bush administration is currently continuing with the 13 year-old nuclear test moratorium, it has made clear its opposition to the CTBT, and it is possible that the United States could resume nuclear explosions in the future.

References

[Page 122]

AchesonDean. 1950. The Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. 3. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

AchesonDean. 1969. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York and London: W.W. Norton.

Bjorkmanm, James Warner. 1980. “Public Law 480 and the Policies of Self-Help and Short-Tether: Indo-American Relations, 1965–69,” in Lloyd and SusanneRudolph, The Regional Imperative. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: The Humanities Press.

Gould, Harold A.1994. Grass-Roots Politics in India: A Century of Political Evolution in Faizabad District. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH.

Gould, Harold A.2001. “The Reasons Why: The U.S. Failure to Control the Nuclear Agenda in South Asia,” in A.Kapur, Y.K.Malik, H.A.Gould, and A.G.Rubinoff (eds), India and the United States in a Changing World, pp. 144–215. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Gould, Harold A.2006. “The India Lobby and the San Francisco Conference,” in Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The Rise of the India Lobby in the United States, 1900 to 1946, pp. 379–386. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Haqqani, Husain. 2006. “Pakistan's Perennial Political Crisis,” The State of Pakistan,” The publication of papers presented on April 2, 2006, at a colloquium organized by the South Asia Program of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Washington, DC, pp. 3–17.

Rubinoff, G. Arthur. 2001. “Legislative Perceptions of Indo-American Relations,” in A.Kapur, Y.K.Malik, H.A.Gould, and A.G.Rubinoff (eds), India and the United States in a Changing World, pp. 199–200. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Rudolph, Llyod. 1993. “Why Rajiv Gandhi's Death Saved the Congress: How an Event Affected the Outcome of the 1991 Election in India,” in Harold A.Gould and SumitGanguly (eds), India Votes: Alliance Politics in the Ninth and Tenth General Elections, pp. 436–453. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Thornton, Thomas. 1992. “U.S.–Indian Relations in the Nixon and Ford Years,” in Harold A.Gould and SumitGanguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: U.S.–Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

About the Author

[Page 136]

Harold A. Gould is a Visiting Professor in the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. Previous to that he was Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Washington University of St. Louis in 1959. Since going to India on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1954–1955, Dr Gould has made numerous research trips to India (with grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the University of Illinois Research Board); he spent more than a total of ten years in the country spread over more than fifty years. His research and scholarly publications encompass every facet of Indian society and civilization that is relevant for a social scientist/social historian, including rural society, social stratification, local-level politics, electoral processes, and national and international politics.

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Gould, H. A. (2010). The South Asia story: The first sixty years of US relations with India and Pakistan New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd doi: 10.4135/9788132105503

Gould, Harold A.. The South Asia Story: The First Sixty Years of US Relations with India and Pakistan. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2010. doi: 10.4135/9788132105503.

Gould, H A 2010, The south asia story: the first sixty years of us relations with india and pakistan, SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, viewed 19 December 2018, doi: 10.4135/9788132105503.